


A Hazy Shade of Winter

by MrSandman



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alien Planet, Christmas, Christmas Crackers, Christmas market, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Snow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 23:26:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29892150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrSandman/pseuds/MrSandman
Summary: Bill finds herself at St Luke's on a Christmas Day walk, and she and the Doctor go for a festive adventure. Food, picturesque scenery, and the usual shenanigans ensue.
Relationships: Heather (Doctor Who: The Pilot)/Bill Potts, Twelfth Doctor & Bill Potts
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	A Hazy Shade of Winter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bxdlvnds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bxdlvnds/gifts).



> Hello! I am very much aware that it is no longer Christmas, but I vowed to write this for Rory as a Christmas present back in December, and I've finally been permitted to do so by my brain! Everyone cheered! :P Equally, there is a dire lack of Bill fic, and so hopefully this goes some way towards rectifying that.
> 
> This was very kindly looked over by Elish / Renoteen and edited by Nik / princessoftheworlds - thank you both so much! <3
> 
> So yes, here is your wholesome Bill fic (with a smidge of my trademark angst, I won't lie), Rory - Merry Christmas, in March! I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it :'D.
> 
> Title from A Hazy Shade of Winter by Simon & Garfunkel.

Crunching through the snow as eddies of delicate white flakes whirled around her, Bill Potts jammed her gloved hands firmly into her pockets and hunched her shoulders against the December chill.

Admittedly, the hunched shoulders weren’t _just_ a reaction to the cold, though it was certainly playing a part. But Bill had never been good at keeping her emotions from seeping through to her body language, and festive or not, Christmas Day had so far proven to be no exception.

Bill laughed wryly, watching the snow dance and spin in the air. She was sure that, deep down and in her own bizarre way, her foster mum was trying… or she liked to hope that she was, even if Bill couldn’t really see it. But _god,_ Christmas had just been so _awkward!_ She had had nothing to say to Moira, and Moira had had nothing to say to her. They had just sat there over Christmas dinner, Bill pushing her Brussels sprouts around her plate and Moira opining and complaining in equal measure. Bill had been more than a little relieved when Moira had abandoned the table in favour of sitting in front of some shitty reruns with a tin of Quality Street, and she immediately made her excuses and dashed out the door before an argument could start up about how quickly Bill had or hadn’t done the washing up. 

She had been ruminating for so long that she hadn’t noticed that her feet had carried her all the way to St Luke’s, of all places. The building looked pale, gloomy and a little unfriendly against the stark whiteness of the snowdrifts, and Bill was about to turn away when she noticed one window lit up among rows and rows of dark and shuttered panes. It was the Doctor’s office, Bill realised, and for some reason she was surprised by the observation. She had assumed that the Doctor would be off somewhere in the TARDIS, gallivanting around or visiting one of the friends that he very occasionally mentioned in passing. 

Shifting on the balls of her feet for no more than a moment, Bill made a split-second decision and let her feet carry her across the grass towards the front door before her brain could talk her out of it. Trying the doors, she was unsurprised to find them locked, and rolled her eyes; there hadn’t been much point in trying, given that it was Christmas. She’d never thought to ask for the number to call the TARDIS phone, or even to ask if she _could_ call it, and unsurprisingly, she doubted that shouting loudly in the direction of the office would have much effect.

Thinking quickly, Bill scrabbled around in the bushes, looking for some small, smooth stones. Her hands were cold and wet with rapidly melting snow when she finally straightened up, a handful of pebbles clutched against her chest and a smile growing on her face. 

Dashing over to the patch of grass under the Doctor’s window, Bill contemplated the height of the glass and how far away she was for a moment. She’d never been particularly good at aiming throws - she’d always preferred football or swimming at school, and now, she supposed, she was a seasoned professional at running. But it was her best shot - her only shot, really, if she didn’t want to trail all the way back home to face more uncomfortable silences - and Bill Potts was nothing if not determined.

The first stone didn’t quite reach the height of the window, and the second glanced off the windowsill, but the third made contact with the glass, as did the fourth and the fifth. By the seventh pebble, Bill could see the Doctor at the window, frowning out through the glass suspiciously. His eyes lit up when he saw Bill standing on the frozen grass below, however, and he immediately pulled the window open enthusiastically.

“Bill!” the Doctor called down to her, and Bill waved, grinning. “What are you doing down there?”

“Just fancied a walk,” Bill shouted back, noting with delight that the Doctor was wearing a colourful paper hat on his head. Nardole must have persuaded him to pull a Christmas cracker, then. 

“Well, don’t just stand there in the cold! Come upstairs,” the Doctor said, leaning even further out the window. 

“I can’t,” Bill replied. “The door’s locked.”

“Right, yes, of course,” the Doctor said, disappearing from the window with a distant cry of “meet you there!” 

Bill stood and stared up at the now-empty window for a moment longer, before jogging back over to the front of the building. She only had to wait very briefly before the heavy oak doors swung open to reveal the Doctor, sonic screwdriver in hand.

“Well? Come on then,” the Doctor said eagerly, and Bill was left to watch the Doctor’s retreating back as he dashed off in the direction of his study. 

Following close behind him, Bill was surprised when she stepped into his room and wasn’t immediately greeted by Nardole. The Doctor was already sat behind his desk with his feet propped up on the corner, tinkering with something that he had presumably rediscovered in the mess before him, and Bill automatically sank into the chair opposite him.

“So, Bill Potts.” The Doctor grinned at her. Bill smiled back at him, glancing around.

“That’s me,” she said, noticing that there was only one teacup balanced precariously on towering piles of marking, clinging to its matching saucer for dear life. “Where’s Nardole? I thought he liked our ‘quaint little Earth traditions’.”

“He’s not here,” the Doctor said, stating the obvious. “I gave him the day off, several days in fact. I dropped him off in the next solar system over and told him to be back there in a few days’ time, and frankly, I dread to think what he’s been doing in the meantime.” He shuddered in mock-horror, but Bill could see a funny sort of look in his eyes.

“So… you’re alone, then?” Bill asked, watching his reaction carefully.

“Oh, I’ll go down and see Missy later,” the Doctor commented offhandedly, looking anywhere but at Bill. “It’s nice to have the peace and quiet anyway, without you _students_ running around, and Nardole stomping about the place. I don’t even like Christmas!” 

Bill laughed at that, thinking that the Doctor did seem the epitome of a Scrooge, but the sound died in her throat as she caught sight of the paper crown nested in his curls. The Doctor must have pulled the cracker all by himself, alone in his rooms at the university. _No one should be alone at Christmas,_ Bill thought fiercely, _especially not the Doctor._ She knew what he was like, with his tendency towards thinking hard enough to strain something and the ever-present lonely look in his eyes, and she knew that he didn’t want to be by himself, not really.

“Right, we can’t have that,” she muttered, and in a louder voice: “Well, good thing I stopped by, then! Us Christmas haters have got to stick together, eh?” She reached over and snatched up a forgotten cracker from the other end of the table, and held it out to the Doctor like an offering.

The Doctor looked down his nose at her, but Bill kept looking at him expectantly, never lowering her arm. Eventually, a small smile broke through, and the Doctor took hold of the other end of the cracker, pulling hard against Bill’s opposing force until the loud _crack_ of the gunpowder sounded in the otherwise quiet room.

“I won!” Bill crowed, extracting a yellow paper hat from the barrel of the cracker and perching it on her head. She disregarded the shiny plastic moustache that had fallen out alongside the hat in favour of the small slip of paper clinging to the inside of the cardboard, reading it once before rolling her eyes and snorting with laughter.

“How do snowmen get around?” she prompted, and the Doctor buried his face in his hands.

“No, no, no,” he said in despair, as Bill snickered from behind the joke card. 

“By icicle!” she declared triumphantly, her grin widening when the Doctor met her eye.

“I think I’d rather you’d left me alone,” the Doctor replied with a sigh, but Bill knew from his fond smile that he didn’t mean that in the slightest.

“I know you don’t mean that,” Bill chided, “because then you’d have no one to go adventuring with you!”

“I don’t know what you mean,” the Doctor insisted, a knowing twinkle in his eye. The Doctor could see what Bill was doing, but he was letting her get away with it, which was as good as giving her his seal of approval, really.

“Oh, come on! You’re dying to go somewhere, I can just feel it.” Bill pulled the paper crown off her head and threw it on to the Doctor’s desk determinedly, before pushing her chair back and jumping to her feet. The Doctor looked up at her for a moment, completely immobile, before leaping out of his chair and dashing over to the TARDIS. 

“Well then?” he prompted when he’d successfully unlocked the door, turning his customary eccentric and overexcited grin on Bill. “What are you waiting for?”

***

Stepping out of the TARDIS door after a characteristically bumpy landing, Bill’s feet immediately sank several inches into a thick layer of snow. She was glad that the Doctor had insisted upon her changing into warmer clothing and snow-boots in the on-board wardrobe, with a reminder that “temperatures on other planets can far outstrip anything your ‘high tops’ can withstand.”

“Wow!” Bill took a few measured steps out into the untouched world of white that surrounded her, glinting in the pale gloom of twilight. She never ceased to be amazed by the experience of setting foot on a completely new planet, the endless possibilities stretching out before her as another adventure with the Doctor began. 

“Wow what? We’re parked outside of town!” The Doctor joined her in the snowy field, pulling a face as his boots evidently failed to stop his feet from coming into contact with a generous dose of freezing cold slush.

“Maybe I’m not the only one who needed to find something warmer in the wardrobe,” Bill commented, and the Doctor tutted at her. Bill laughed. “So what are we here to see, then?”

“Are you telling me this empty field isn’t exciting enough for you? You humans are so ungrateful.” Bill rolled her eyes at the Doctor, knowing his particularly dry brand of humour when she heard it.

“Yeah, alright, it’s a lovely field. But you mentioned something about a town,” Bill pointed out, and the Doctor shook his fist in mock-disappointment at being caught out. He withdrew his sonic screwdriver from his inside pocket and took some readings, before holding the device up to his eye and nodding knowingly.

“It’s this way,” the Doctor said, and Bill followed him in the direction of a gently sloping hill that she hadn’t noticed at first. She still had no idea what the Doctor was seeing when he checked the sonic, given that it didn’t have a screen, or how exactly it could have told him the direction they should take, but she was getting a little cold standing around in the snow, and that was enough to persuade her.

Trudging through the snowdrifts, Bill glanced around in the hopes of seeing some local wildlife, but the fields were bare, completely devoid of any signs of life. She supposed that it was almost nightfall, and freezing to boot, so any grazing animals would presumably have been herded back to wherever all the people- or rather, life forms were.

Pondering the matter of grazing animals and alien civilisations further, Bill distracted and entertained herself in equal measure for much of the duration of the walk to - and hike up - the hill. Once she and the Doctor reached the crest, Bill could see a town nestled in the smaller foothills below, flickering lights in every window and wispy tendrils of smoke curling up into the night sky.

“Aha!” The Doctor’s eyes shone as he looked down at the winding streets below them, and he immediately began to descend the hill, slipping and sliding on the frozen ground. Bill followed him more hesitantly, not particularly keen on the idea of falling face-first into the snow.

“There had better be something warm and edible at the bottom of this hill,” she joked lightly, unwrapping her hands from around her own arms to hold them out for balance, and shivering when the chilly breeze hit her torso.

“Oh, there will be,” the Doctor replied enigmatically, still sliding all over the place, “believe me. I’ve been here before, and you’re going to _love_ it!”

And love it Bill did. The town turned out to be bustling despite its sleepy surroundings, with aliens of all kinds out for a stroll, or grouped together chattering excitedly. The houses looked to be made of some kind of clay, with thatched rooves made of twigs and secured with strong-looking vines, but a thick layer of snow covered most of the dwellings, with tunnels carved out to allow entry and exit. Bill realised that the inhabitants of the planet had evidently realised that snow was an excellent insulator against the elements, as she could see families building up the snow coats where they had been thinned by the wind, and presumably the heat of the nearest star during the day.

Bill stopped short as a herd of what looked like brightly coloured cow-frog hybrids was led along the road in front of her, and the shepherd bringing up the rear nodded to her in thanks. Or at least, Bill was fairly sure that the gesture was in thanks, but she was still not an expert in alien body language, so for all she knew it could have been a sign of complete exasperation…

“Bill! Over here!” 

Bill glanced to her right to see the Doctor some ways ahead of her, pointing excitedly at what looked to be a sizeable market. She hurried after the Doctor, and together they stepped through an arch made of leaves and berries that resembled holly, into a sprawling ring of stalls, each lit with strings of what she thought might be bioluminescent plants. 

Bill caught sight of a stall selling small wooden toys, another advertising painted clay pots, and another loaded down with brightly coloured hats. Mouth-watering smells made their way over to her from another few stalls on the other side of the ring, where Bill could see huge, steaming pewter vats, and what looked to be a small clay oven that was covered with compacted earth and, as before, a coating of snow.

“It’s like an alien Christmas market!” Bill exclaimed, grinning from ear to ear.

“I suppose it is,” the Doctor said, “though they’re a daily occurrence here, you know, what with it being eternally winter!”

“I went to a Christmas fair once,” Bill commented as she dragged the Doctor towards the food stalls, “one of the famous ones in Berlin! I got chatting to this cute girl brewing mulled wine at one of the stalls…” She sighed happily, reminded of the cup of mulled wine and the kiss that she and Hanna had shared under the mistletoe, after the market had technically closed down for the night.

“Drink up,” the Doctor said, bringing her out of her thoughts as he shoved a cup of something warm and spiced under her nose. “It’s perfectly safe for human consumption, everything here is really. I’d avoid the cheese, though - it doesn’t tend to agree with the digestion of humanoids with only one stomach.”

Bill raised a sceptical eyebrow at him as she took a sip of the drink, the other eyebrow following soon afterwards as the taste of something sweet, savoury, and somewhat indescribable washed over her tongue. She took another sip despite the liquid’s temperature, and another, and soon the drink was gone, much to her disappointment. 

At the look on her face, the Doctor began rummaging about in his coat pocket, pulling out a yo-yo, several handkerchiefs, a set of blueprints, and a miniature model of what might have been the Flying Dutchman, before pulling out a bright red flask with a flourish. Dashing back over to the stall, he began conversing with the owner, gesticulating wildly. Eventually, the owner took the flask from him and began filling it, but by this point Bill’s interests lay elsewhere, and she was already wandering over to the stalls of knick-knacks. 

The clay pottery caught her interest, and she thought about how amazing it would be to have ceramicware from another planet in her flat, but it wasn’t as if she’d had time to visit the local interplanetary bureau de change before they arrived. She didn’t even know what the local currency _was,_ let alone how the Doctor had managed to get ahold of some to pay for the drinks, and she resolved to ask him some more about the planet when he came over to find her.

Casting her eye over the products on the stall, Bill’s eye was caught by a small painted bird - or at least, she thought it was a bird - perched on the end of a row of larger and more impressive clay animals. It looked rather like a robin, but its plumage was painted in shades of bright blue, green and purple, with a patch on its chest in gold. She picked it up off the row and stared at it in delight, wondering if she could call in a few favours with the Doctor and pay him back later.

“He’s lovely, isn’t he?” said a voice, and Bill looked up to see the stall owner looking at her, a smile on their face. Their head was covered in a mass of onyx coils pinned into an elaborate style, all three of their eyes outlined in some kind of dark kohl, and their wrists were adorned with numerous delicate bracelets. “I’ve always loved painting them, though they never prove popular with my customers, since the real things are such a nuisance for the farmers and their crops.”

“I love them too, I think,” Bill said, turning the bird this way and that. “I wish I’d thought to bring money with me. Not sure how I would’ve got hold of any, but still.”

The seller looked at Bill quizzically, then smiled. They reached out and closed Bill’s fingers over the bird, their long and slender fingers wrapping easily around Bill’s own, much smaller hand. 

“Take it,” they said, shaking their head emphatically when Bill opened her mouth to refuse. “Please, he’s yours. I can see that he brings you great joy.”

“Thank you,” Bill replied sincerely, pressing her other hand over the seller’s for a moment before they both let go, laughing bashfully. “Thank you so much. What’s, er, what’s your name?”

“Taala,” replied the seller, their eyes narrowing gently as their smile grew. “And yours?”

“Bill Potts,” Bill said, and Taala tested it out briefly, making Bill laugh at their expression as the unfamiliar syllables rolled off their tongue. 

“It was a blessing to meet you, Bill Potts. I wish you safe travels.”

“Thank you,” Bill said again, but before she could add something more, the Doctor popped up at her side, bowing respectfully to Taala before presenting Bill with a surprisingly heavy flask of the drink she had been enjoying before.

“It’s bigger on the inside,” the Doctor said, gesturing at the flask with pride. Bill laughed, handing it back to him and turning to roll her eyes fondly at Taala.

“I think that’s my cue to leave,” Bill commented wryly as the Doctor strode off in the direction of the food stalls once more, ever eager to make sure that Bill was properly fed even without Nardole there to prepare things. “It was _amazing_ to meet you, Taala.” With that, she slipped the painted bird into her jacket pocket, waving once at Taala before following the Doctor.

“Who was that, then?” the Doctor asked once he and Bill were standing in the queue for a stall selling elaborately stuffed flatbreads. 

“Taala,” Bill said, reading into her pocket to pull out the bird. “They gave me this, actually, wouldn’t let me pay for it even if I could’ve.”

“I see,” the Doctor said knowingly, practically smirking at Bill.

“Shut up,” Bill laughed, shoving him lightly and pocketing the bird again. “I hope whatever we’re getting from here is half as nice as that drink was!”

Luckily, the flatbreads didn’t disappoint, and the Doctor and Bill enjoyed their food on one of the roughly carved wooden benches placed in the centre of the ring of stalls. Bill grinned as the Doctor got sauce all over his face, thinking it fortunate that he had so many handkerchiefs on him at all times. 

Bill was just beginning to think that perhaps the trip would go off without a hitch for once when the sound of loud, angry voices reached her ears. Sighing, she looked up to see a crowd of townspeople burst through the arch into the marketplace, all of them brandishing flaming torches or farming tools.

“There he is!” one shouted, pointing over at where the Doctor and Bill were sitting, and the pair leapt up in alarm.

“I think we’d better run,” Bill commented under her breath, as she and the Doctor edged towards the gap between the nearest two stalls.

“I think we had,” the Doctor replied, grabbing Bill’s hand and dragging her out of the market and back into the town. The two pelted through the narrow streets, dodging locals and more wild and wonderful livestock with the mob hot on their heels. The hill proved to be a challenge, as even Bill in her snow-boots kept sliding down every few steps. Once they’d made it to the other side, Bill simply gave up and skidded her way down, sprinting for the TARDIS alongside the Doctor.

Pulling a key out of the neck of his shirt, the Doctor fumbled briefly for the lock, before bursting through the doors and pulling Bill in behind him. Bill slammed the doors behind her, the angry roar of the townspeople outside growing suddenly quiet, before she and the Doctor leaned against them and looked at each other, bursting into slightly hysterical laughter.

Eventually, the Doctor peeled himself away from the doors and stepped over to the controls, tapping a few keys and examining the screen in front of him with furrowed brows.

“Sooo… any idea why we ended up being chased out of town by an armed mob?” Bill asked, and the Doctor looked up at her in exasperation.

“Well how was I to know that I looked exactly like their most wanted criminal?” the Doctor replied, seeming more annoyed with himself than with the locals, and Bill laughed, walking over to the controls and looking at the increasingly distant backs of the fairly despondent-looking mob on the screen, as they walked away from the TARDIS.

“It’s alright, Doctor, it’s no big deal,” she insisted. “Besides, you’ve still got a flask of that drink in your pocket, so at least we’ve got that!”

Suddenly a thought struck her, and Bill plunged her hand into her pocket, just to check whether… Yes, thank goodness, the clay bird was still there. Though she wished she’d been able to speak to Taala some more, she thought as her hand closed around the bird, she’d always have a reminder of them to make her smile.

***

That wonderful Christmas was the first of many that Bill spent with the Doctor, even if the Doctor didn’t know it. After she… well, she wasn’t really sure what to call her reunion with Heather and her transformation, but after that, the two of them kept tabs on him.

Given that Bill was no longer bound by the laws of space and time, she and Heather went back to check on the Doctor in the years before Bill had met him. Bill just had a feeling that the Doctor could probably do with a friend or two, and now she and Heather could be those friends.

They kept their distance, of course, so as not to interfere too drastically with the timelines. Mostly, Bill just wrote the Doctor anonymous Christmas cards and posted them under the door of his office at St Luke’s, or watched from afar as the Doctor battled all manner of hostile enemies on Christmas Day itself. 

Once, Bill found the Doctor the year after his previous companion had left him, and she knew that this year, something had to be different. So she took the little brightly-coloured clay bird from the shelf in the flat she shared with Heather, wrapped it in tissue paper, and dropped it on the Doctor’s desk in the moment between one breath and the next.

She watched the Doctor as he blinked, startled, before poking the parcel suspiciously. Eventually, curiosity evidently won out, and he gently unwrapped the bird from its paper prison. He stared at it in confusion, a ghost of a small smile gracing his features, before placing it on his desk, next to the framed photos he kept there.

Bill smiled, from her position in the shadows, and continued to watch over the Doctor.

One year, Bill was startled to realise that the Doctor had regenerated, and she was very, _very_ different to her previous self. Bill and Heather watched over her, too, even when she had her friends around her, just to make sure that the sad twinkle that appeared in her eye sometimes didn’t grow into something more, as it often had with her previous self.

The years that she was in prison were the hardest for Bill, because she knew that all she could do was watch. She knew that better days were coming for the Doctor, though she didn’t know _how_ she knew this, exactly, but it hurt her to see her friend in so much anguish. Equally, she also knew better than to interfere with events, lest she affect that future happiness, and so she kept her distance, lurking in the shadows clinging to Heather’s hand, crying as the Doctor directed an unfocused stare into the middle distance.

Bill would always be there for the Doctor, though, no matter how hard it was at times. Because nobody should have to be alone at Christmas, the Doctor included, and Bill was damned if she wasn’t going to be there for the best friend she’d ever had.

Bill would be there for the Doctor, and one day she would be freed from prison and reunited with her friends.

And maybe, if the stars aligned, Bill would spend another Christmas with the incredible person who first showed her the universe.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Feel free to drop by and say hi on twitter (@hetheyharkness) or tumblr (kingisdead), should you so desire it. Comments, kudos etc. are very much appreciated! Have a great day :D


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